:: yet another ploy
The hard-left has long demonized President Bush in many ways, among them, characterizing him as a totalitarian leader along the lines of Hitler, with his Christian followers playing the role of the gullible sheep that are easily herded and lead.
What is disconcerting is that this bash-Bush ploy is yet again making an appearance in
this op-ed piece by Thom Hartman of GlobalVision.net. I wouldn't have known about it without the unintended appearance as copy-pastes at a trading site I visit. Mind you, I don't know the paster on the other end, but the site itself is pretty much a nose-down "serious" subscription site. This accidental posting was curious to me, and so off to google I went.
The earlier piece,
about which I wrote earlier, had its origin in a
much-ballyhooed piece by Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution. The appearance of this new piece leads me to think that it is yet another move of the liberal left, so desperate to re-inflate the ranks decimated by reality hitting the failed eternal prosperity vision of an HGTV Dream Home in every pot.
I believe this ploy will backfire. It may already be back-firing,. To characterize the President as Hitler is desperate. Mind you, I'm not a card-carrying Republican, but a Hitler he isn't and, more importantly, a Germany we, the USA, are not.
Hitler needed the conditions in Germany as much as the impoverished and desperate Germans were ready to take on a Hitler. This ploy is being used in the hope of appealing to the loathing most civilized people have for totalitarianism.
What makes it ludicrous, and failed, is that the very foil to which the comparison must be contrasted is far more Hitler-esque. I am speaking of Saddam Hussein, who in his Ba'athist Socialist view of the world held Hitler and Stalin in the highest regard. "His" people, and those particularly of Stalin, were frightened "followers", which by extension this ploy suggests Americans are, or are close to becoming.
Another aspect of this ploy is the appeal to our sympathy for the hapless Iraqi people, who the big-bad-imperialist nation is crushing under the bootheel of their totalitarian leader, Hitler, errr Bush. The implication is that the Iraqi are like the innocent Poles, the first victims to fall under the tip of Hitlers warrior spear, whose fall and neglect by the rest of the world lead to a holocaust campaign of world dominion and terror. The implication here is that the world must rally to oppose Bush, or risk a conflagration of Wagnerian proportions.
Further, by extension, we, the American people are falling into the same trap as the Germans of 1930, who blindly followed Hitler in his zeal to scourge the world of objectionable people andnon-conforming views. BOSH.
Already we see that the "Mesopotamian Stalingrad" did not come to pass. That posited that the hapless innocent Iraqi people would stalwartly outlast the ultimately doomed seige of the totalitarian leader. I don't hear much of this Stalingrad anymore.
Nevertheless, to persist in this characterization will backfire. Mostly because it is so transparently propagandistic in its use of transcendent symbolism (which even if one is ignorant they are being manipulated, their subconscious is aware of it).
But it is a failure because Americans at all levels do not see themselves or their leaders in those roles.
"We" may be gullible as much as any nation or people are gullible-- after all more than a few bought the Clinton line of prosperity forever, but "we" are not a desperate nation.
My hope is that the Democrats and "liberal left" abandon this desperate ploy, and quickly if they don't want to further alienate bi-partisan fence straddlers. Who knows, to pursue reality may free their creative energies enough to find a cause worthy of our attention.
